ARKHANGELSK, August 27. /TASS/. The first restoration season was closed at the Arctic’s only wooden hangar for planes, which was built in 1932 in the Tikhaya Bay on the Hooker Island, the Franz Josef Land archipelago. The expedition’s head Pavel Filin told TASS six restoration specialists worked on the Hooker Island for a month.
"This year, we began emergency restoration work on the hangar," he said. "We have removed all the rotten plywood, which had covered it, then strengthened the object’s trusses - this was complicated work at a big height."
"Our objective for the season was to strengthen the hangar’s roof - we have fulfilled this task," he added.
Director of the Russian Arctic national park Alexander Kirilov told TASS the restoration specialists had stopped the ruining process, and stressed logistics is the project’s most complicated part. "The transported supplies are most complicated - we are trying to use every vessel going to the Hooker Island to be used maximum efficiently to bring there materials to restore the cultural heritage objects," the director said.
In four years, the hangar will be a home for the world’s northernmost museum of the North Pole’s exploration.
"Most tours, crossing Franz Josef Land, head for the North Pole, and tourists are focused on the pole," Filin said. "The archipelago practically always used to be a foothold for conquering the North Pole, and this is why we want to organize the world’s northernmost museum so that to present in it Russia’s input in the process, to show Russia’s role in exploration and development of the Northern Sea Route and the Arctic."
The Tikhaya Bay polar station was on the Hooker Island between 1929 and 1957. It was closed to give way to the Druzhnaya observatory on the Heiss Island, which from 1972 bears the name of the North Pole-1 drifting ice station’s participant Ernst Krenkel.
The Russian Arctic national park is Russia’s northernmost and biggest natural reserve, which unites the Franz Josef Land archipelago and the northern part of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. In the Tikhaya Bay, the park has a seasonal base, which works from June to September-October.